


Arrangements

by intoapuddle



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dom/sub, Getting Together, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:08:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27455476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoapuddle/pseuds/intoapuddle
Summary: One night stands have worn out their welcome, but Dan isn't ready for a relationship. Thankfully, other arrangements can be made.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 158





	Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LetGladnessDwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetGladnessDwell/gifts).



> thank you letgladnessdwell for the prompt and for donating to Phil's birthday drive <3!
> 
> also big shout out to jude, bri, daye, chicken, and fi for beta reading and cheerleading <33

The wind could knock over the building that contains Dan’s unfortunate London flat. The blinds have been pulled down to mute the noisy rattle of another blow. Making his way home took more effort than the eight hours of work he’d endured prior. But then, maintaining his Reddit and Pokémon Go addiction to make the hours go by at the quiet, bankruptcy prone bookshop he works at isn’t exactly a chore.

Dan is comfortable now. With a blanket snug around his shoulders and his nose filled with the scent of body wash and scented candles, he’s almost capable of forgetting to worry about the mice that are working on probably the fourth generation of their family tree, if trees were circle shaped. The familiar sound of a news broadcast is filling his ears as he powers up his Charizard. London might have a lot of problems, but the amount of Pokéstops is not one of them.

Friday nights are special. Dan is starting to feel sleepy where he’s sinking further and further down in the corner of the sofa. It’s a good state of mind to be in, knowing what’s to come. As long as he doesn’t actually fall asleep, the fuzzy edges of the world will remain for long enough that he’ll be able to slip under easily once Phil arrives.

Dan takes a deep breath. He’s not thinking about it. If he thinks about it, his heart starts to race and his fingertips start to tingle, and he’s not supposed to be on edge about it. When he’s thinking about it, and getting nervous, it doesn’t turn out well. It just doesn’t _work,_ and fuck, tonight Dan really needs it to work.

He’s not miserable here. He truly isn’t. He just never considered how fortunate he was to live in his suffocating family home in Wokingham before packing up his bags and moving, heart full of a heavy, painful sense of vindication. Dan has never felt as in control as he does now, but he also thinks he prefers real windows and the ability to leave food on the counter for more than the five minutes it takes for the mouse family to come expecting a feast.

It’s just that he’s struggling to find a place of belonging, and an ability to relax without distraction, as he works on finding his place in this city. He’ll get there, one day. He might not always aggressively _need_ this like he does now. But in the meantime, Dan takes comfort in knowing that Phil is going to arrive and he’s going to make things calm and fuck, Dan has to stop thinking about it before the fuzzy edges of the world start to look solid.

A text message lets him know that Phil’s here. Dan takes a deep breath as he sits up, shrugs the blanket off from over his shoulders, and blows out the candles on top of the hand-me-down coffee table. Phil is here, on the other side of the front door. The exaggerated, weirdly rhythmic footsteps up the stairs were the tell. They’ve agreed on that instead of a knock, or God forbid the doorbell. No other sound has quite the same ability to spike Dan’s anxiety, and that’s literally the opposite of what they’re trying to achieve with these Friday evening rendezvous.

Dan _is_ nervous. In a way, he always is once he’s opened the door to Phil’s smile. He takes one look at that unruly black quiff and those round blue eyes and that deliciously pink cupid’s bow and he’s done for; reverted back to being a confused thirteen year old with a crush on a boy with an eerily similar look. Those types of nerves are allowed, though. They make things better. And it’s nice to be hugged and giggled at while suppressing the force of this wave of excitement that’s crashing over him, making him feel as weak as the windows in this flat, as ready to be destroyed as the food Dan leaves on the kitchen counter for too long.

“You smell good,” Phil says. His fingertips run down Dan’s spine, slowly, teasing at the small of his back before going back up to settle on his waist.

“Took a shower,” Dan breathes out. He turns his head where it’s resting on Phil’s shoulder. With a small movement of his head, he nudges the side of Phil’s neck with his nose. Phil grabs his waist a little harder.

“Good,” Phil says, because of course he does.

And of course, Dan sucks in a breath. Suddenly his lungs feel empty.

They part, tingling excitement running between them like something electric. Phil’s got that look in his eyes that’s so different from the usual air of awkwardness and mischief he exudes. Dan lets out a small laugh.

“So, how are you?” he asks as he makes his way to the bedroom, Phil following.

“I’m great right now,” Phil says. Just as Dan turns around in the bedroom, only lit up by the teddy bear lamp on his bedside table, Phil gives an apologetic smile. “Need to pee. Make yourself comfortable, yeah?”

It’s strange that Phil’s the one to say it when they’re at Dan’s place, but this is what it’s all about. They’re always here, and Phil’s meant to act like he’s leading. (Most of the time, anyway. They’ve switched their roles enough by now that nothing’s really set in stone anymore.) 

The idea of that had seemed stupid a month ago, when Dan was second guessing inviting this perfect stranger to his home to tell him what to do. It probably is a bit stupid. But in reality, it’s the best thing that’s happened to him since he moved to London so far.

“Sure,” is Dan’s casual response, and then Phil’s gone again.

Dan pulls off his pyjama bottoms and sits down in the middle of the bed. He props up a pillow behind his head and releases a breath, listening to any little sound to indicate where Phil is.

Dan doesn’t open his eyes when he hears Phil enter. Phil doesn’t tell him to. Instead, there’s a sound of a zipper and a noise of fabric falling onto the floor, and then the mattress shifts with Phil’s weight. 

Phil’s presence is so warm, so distinct. Dan shivers as a hand runs up his thigh. He instinctively spreads his legs, shifts to make room. His eyes flutter open. He doesn’t mean to look, but now Phil’s lying next to him, so close, fingers running through Dan’s damp curls. Phil leans in. They kiss as Phil cups Dan through his underwear.

His heart is pounding at this point, as he pushes into Phil’s touch and kisses him harder. Phil lets out a pleased little noise that goes straight to Dan’s dick.

“God,” Dan groans as Phil pulls away to lick his lips. “I-”

_I need this. I need you._

“You okay?” Phil asks. He’s stroking Dan through his underwear, but stops as he asks the question.

Dan nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Just excited.”

“Come here,” Phil says.

He grabs Dan by the back of the thigh and pulls him onto his lap. The change of position is a godsend, somehow, because despite the fact that Dan’s meant to lose control, the feeling of gaining some is what he needs right now.

“Better?” Phil asks.

Dan wraps his arms around Phil’s neck with a hum of agreement, a smile he wasn’t able to muster before, and leans in to kiss him again. Phil squeezes Dan’s ass as Dan pushes his tongue in his mouth. It’s a lot, probably, but Phil seems okay with everything right now. He knows to ease Dan into it, to keep from commanding right away. Dan wants this, needs this with all that he is, but he can’t just switch it on like he used to assume people did.

It’s easy to melt into being controlled, eventually. Phil starts by grabbing a hold of his hips, something Dan wouldn’t and shouldn’t try to wriggle his way out of. The fuzzy edges of the world return and then the world kind of disappears as Phil holds him steady and lets Dan nuzzle into his neck. He’s waiting for Dan’s breath to even out, probably. That’s what he’s said a couple times when they pause and Dan knows to wait for Phil to say something, do something, before they continue.

So Dan waits. And then Phil does something.

-

Dan, honestly, didn’t really mean to meet Phil.

It was a chance thing, a random stumble after finding out that Grindr in London is a lot more active than it was back in Wokingham. Scratch that-Wokingham was active enough but Dan wasn’t exactly interested in men his dad’s age or acquaintances of acquaintances of his school mates. That didn’t mean he couldn’t conveniently forget about those morals on an admittedly regular basis, but no one has to know that.

It was, however, a very different experience to use an actual picture of himself for the app rather than the one in which his face is partially obscured that he’d always used before. In London, he could flick through pages and pages of men his own age whom he had no relation to whatsoever. It was refreshing, to say the least, but the novelty wore off around the end of the first week Dan used it. It took him only one and a half awkward hook-ups to realise that he wasn’t looking to get laid anymore. He wasn’t not looking for a relationship either, though. 

Despite that, he didn’t actually delete the app. 

Treating it like a personal victory might be strange, sure. Dan’s not one to promote abstinence or proving anything to himself when it comes to this, except for one thing. The fact that he was no longer desperate or lonely enough to go looking for the empty, fleeting validation sucking a stranger off used to provide him with. That’s a step. Dan doesn’t know where he’s going or what he wants ultimately, but he’s pretty sure that progression was necessary in his quest to figure it out.

So he kept the app like a reminder that he’s making personal improvements. Even when the world felt ugly and he was unfulfilled and alone and struggling in his new surroundings of mice and rattling windows, he knew that much to be true. He wasn’t in the stand-still of his life anymore, and that mattered.

Finding Phil’s page was an accident. Bored and running on a four hour Drag Race bingewatch to replace sleep, he looked through Grindr profiles for no other reason than to silently judge something about each and every one just to entertain himself and hopefully become tired enough to actually fall asleep.

There are plenty of Dominants looking for Submissives on this app, but none of them were quite like Phil’s. Phil didn’t look intimidating, for starters. Not like other doms do, anyway. Rather, Phil’s intimidating quality was that he looked put together and kind and normal enough. His profile stated that he’s a switch whose experiences with BDSM have only been in a Submissive role so far. It said he wants to get an outlet for the dominant side of himself with someone on an arranged, regular basis.

Dan wasn’t sure what he wanted, or exactly what arrangements like these look like, but he was curious enough to find out. He’d read fanfiction involving these themes, watched a fair amount of ‘daddy’ porn, so he wouldn’t consider himself completely unfamiliar with the concept. He wasn’t entirely unsure about where he’d put himself on a scale of Dominant to Submissive if he were to try it out at some point. 

Still, Dan was realising that he wanted something between a relationship and a casual hook-up, and that he was curious enough about submitting that it didn’t take much consideration before he sent Phil a message. He didn’t expect to get a response from the insomnia fueled suggestion that they meet up and see where things lead, but Phil responded the very same day.

-

Dan’s impression of Phil as put together, kind, and normal enough didn’t waver much when they first met. The only direction it changed in was for the positive. Rather than just being some guy interested in domination, the person that arrived at Dan's flat that Friday night was so much more. Someone that had to excuse himself to talk on the phone with his brother for five minutes, someone that looked like his life flashed before his eyes when he heard a mouse squeak,someone that recognised the notification sound when Dan received a Pokémon Go alert about an upcoming raid.

He was _fun._ There was an ease, an understanding, building from the very first grimace on Phil’s face when his phone started ringing. Dan can’t remember the last time he simply liked another person that quickly. He’s not sure he’s let his guards down like that with anyone. But here was Phil, strange and awkward and so open.

Dan’s experience is like an either or. Either he gets along with someone well, or there’s sexual chemistry. There wasn’t any time to consider where he stood with Phil the night they first met, before the weirdness of everything settled and the lightness between them became heavy with heat, with desire. Dan’s usual mantra of _don’t fuck this up_ was replaced by the immediacy of their mutual attraction. They couldn’t have fucked it up if they tried.

It was more than a blooming friendship, more than a burgeoning romance. It was more than Dan had signed up for, messaging Phil that one night, but it was exactly what he needed.

-

Phil wrapped his lube slick hand around Dan’s balls. Dan was flat on his back, naked on top of his creaky bed. Phil was kneeling between his spread legs. He was touching everywhere, kissing and squeezing. Everywhere, except for Dan’s pink hard cock stretching up his own tummy and jumping at every faint trace of fingers wisping near there. 

“Fuck,” Dan whined as Phil bent down, his dry hand coming to cup the back of his head and tilt him up for a kiss. It felt like so fucking much.

“Quietly now,” Phil murmured, loosely circling the base of Dan’s cock with his thumb and forefinger.

Dan’s back began arching on its own, his breath hitching as the head of his cock brushed against Phil’s stomach. Toes curling, Dan turned his head away. Something was trying to rush to the surface.

Going from the extremely new experience of connecting with another person so quickly, so fundamentally, to allowing that person to sexually dominate him had the potential to turn it all way too overwhelming. The thing, though, was that Phil didn’t do any of the things Dan had expected him to. He didn’t immediately present a set of rules and commands that Dan should abide by ‘or else’. It felt so casual that at first, it had just felt like making out and grinding. But then the look in Phil’s eyes had changed. His touches became more aggressive. And as they were on the brink of getting in bed and taking their clothes off, Phil had asked him if he still wanted this. He had asked Dan if he wanted to have sex, and if he wanted to try to submit.

Dan had probably answered appropriately, given the way Phil kissed him right after he’d responded with: _“Please.”_

Whining now, absolutely fucking hopeless at obeying the command to be quiet, Dan rutted against Phil’s hold around his dick. Phil took one look at him, eyes dark and full of something like genuine pride, before leaning down and kissing his cheek. With a surprised gasp, Dan soaked their chests with cum.

He was floating and he wasn’t coming down. Nothing had even really happened. They’d made out for a while and then Phil had told him to strip. Gentle touches that went on forever as Phil had asked the smallest things, commands that sounded more like suggestions. All the same, Dan still felt cared for, snug inside the little pocket inside his mind he’s sunk himself inside fully.

It wasn’t anything like the dissociative state he’d expected subspace to be like. He was still here, sharing this with another person, one he’d never think to detach himself from.

“We’re both new at this,” Phil explained later while holding Dan, coaxing him back to reality. “This can be anything we want it to be. We’re not obligated to follow any rules but the ones we figure out for ourselves. If it was good for you, I want to keep seeing you like this.”

He was so genuine. So serious. Actually, _affectionate_ about it. All Dan had said was that he was sorry for ruining it. Phil had laughed and called him crazy. And Dan had insisted, because that’s what he does, that he’d come too early and that he owes him for it.

“It was good,” Dan said, watching Phil’s face for protest. This was too good to be real, that much he was growing pretty certain of. “I want to make it good for you, too.”

“It’s,” Phil said, pausing to swallow and glance at Dan’s lips, “yeah, it’s already good for me.”

Fuck.

“I’ll make you come though,” Dan said. His nerves went somewhere else, he thought, because the way Phil was starting to respond made him want to assert himself and decide for him. 

He grabbed Phil’s hip, got on top of him, and Phil’s body came to life with his own as they began to move together. 

“Do you want to come?” Dan asked, breathless.

“Please,” Phil moaned, eyes brightening with something Dan hadn’t seen in them before. He was getting drunk off it, this trust and power he was being handed.

“Am I-” Dan stuttered, hesitating.

“No,” Phil said. “It’s good. You can dom me, too. If you want to.”

Dan hadn’t been sure that’s what he was doing, but now that Phil had said it he really felt it. He felt the way his mind settled for the first time in a long time. It was suddenly so easy to focus. On Phil’s breathing, on those fluttering eyelids, on everything as Dan got his face between long pale legs and started to lick Phil’s impossibly hard cock. 

Phil grabbed Dan’s wrist, settling the hand around his slender throat. “Don’t squeeze, just, keep it there while-”

“Why?” Dan interrupted him to ask.

“It’s just-” Phil’s chin shook for a second. The emotion behind his eyes was starting to lean into something desperate, “-grounding.”

Dan fit his hand around Phil’s neck. He dragged his tongue flat over Phil’s cockhead. Their eyes locked on one another.

“I’ll take care of you,” Dan heard himself whisper.

All he knew about this guy so far was that he’s got a goofy grin and hates cheese. That he picks up when his brother calls even when he’s about to hook up with someone. That he’s afraid of mice.

All Dan knew about BDSM was that it had to do with dominance, and submission, even though he couldn’t quite pinpoint what either of those things meant within a sexual context.  
But acting on instinct, the desire to care for this perfect stranger came naturally. Even if everything about this should’ve felt unnatural.

It was hard to feel unnatural with Phil, though. As soon as Dan learned that Phil was fearless when it came to sex and intimacy, fearless with Dan, any lingering hesitation vanished. And somehow, a person like that was responding to him with a delicious moan. A person like that handed control over to him like it’s his damn job. Dan didn’t know what the fuck he was doing but he somehow, he knew exactly what to do. He hooked his thumb inside of Phil’s mouth and sucked him off tight and slow until Phil’s uneven breathing got fast and rhythmic.

Phil grabbed Dan’s wrist again and guided it to cover his face. Dan pushed, gently, as he replaced his mouth with a fist around Phil’s cock and wanked him until he came. 

-

The thing about Phil is that he hardly ever does whatever Dan expects him to do. Even when Dan’s sure submission is what he needs and that Phil is simply waiting him out. Even after getting to know him better, a month into it, and he thinks he’s got most of Phil’s little tells memorised, Phil surprises him by fitting Dan’s hand around his neck, asking to be dominated.

This time it takes Dan by enough surprise that he kind of snaps out of it. He lets go of Phil’s throat, relaxes his hand against Phil’s chest, and tries not to laugh.

“I feel bad for you sometimes,” he says. Phil’s got a curious look on his face. They’re naked and panting and were definitely just about to fuck but Dan wanted to say this, so he did.

Phil’s not so far ahead of him that he can’t slow down though. He never is. “What?”

“You were looking for a guy to practice domming on and he turns out to just,” Dan flicks his wrist with a laugh, “dom you instead?”

“Well, I’m not complaining,” Phil grins.

They share a look that’s too familiar for the short month they’ve known each other for.

“What made you think you were gonna submit to anyone anyway?” Phil asks.

It’s like he forgot they were doing something, the way Phil slows and settles and waits for Dan’s response like he’s perfectly okay with that even though they were grinding their dicks together a minute ago.

“Being called a wimpy faggot my whole life, for starters,” Dan blurts.

Phil doesn’t even laugh. He frowns like he just took a bite of something incredibly bitter.

“Sorry, that was too real,” Dan says, clenching his jaw to stop the self loathing from fully consuming him. “And extremely problematic of me to say in so many ways.”

Phil shakes his head. “I get it.”

“And you dommed me, a bit.” Dan is blabbering, trying to talk through the way his chest has started to hurt. “The roles don’t feel that different to me.”

“No? So why do you prefer one?” Phil asks. Now he’s smiling. Dan feels a little better.

“You’re the one with the preference,” Dan says. “You were presenting to me like a dog in heat from the moment we met.”

Phil startles out a laugh. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t know,” Dan says. He squirms away, rolls onto his stomach and hides his face in a pillow. “I don’t know why I have to say things in the worst possible way every time.”

Phil is tapping on his bare shoulder. Dan turns his head to find Phil lying next to him, face so close. They lean in for a kiss at the same time.

“You’re hot,” Phil murmurs.

“When I’m calling you a dog in heat?” Dan splutters.

“It’s like, so wrong it’s right, you know?”

“Right,” Dan muffles against the pillow, stifling a giggle. He bites his lip, eyes wandering to the bruise he sucked into Phil’s chest earlier.

“I think now is a good time for me to tell you I don’t want your dick in my ass,” Phil says, grabbing Dan’s chin to make him look back up at his face.

“My dick, specifically?” Dan says in a mock-offended voice. “Wow.”

“No,” Phil rolls his eyes. “Like. I don’t know. I’m just not into that, really. It’s the big dom deal breaker a lot of the time, so. Thought I should say before you get your hopes up.”

“That’s-,” Dan wants to laugh at Phil’s wording and move on but he caught some vulnerability in the way he said it, too. Like he phrases it that way to take the hurt out of it. “-fine. It doesn’t matter to me. I can still fuck you.”

“Do you want it the other way around?” Phil asks.

“I’m good,” Dan says. He cracks a grin. Phil returns it, eyes squinting and all. It makes Dan’s stomach go tight and fluttery in a way that makes him want to grab and demand until he reaches that pocket in his brain that he only truly gets to when Phil’s squirming and pleading beneath him. “Honestly, I don’t c-”

Phil rolls him over and gets on top of him quicker than Dan has the brain power to process. But suddenly Phil’s warm mouth is on his and they’re kissing with an intensity that doesn’t just feel physical. Dan has no experience with anything but this, with being something other than someone you can fuck as you please, but that experience makes him realise that this is different. Not just in the way he sought out when he realised one night stands weren’t cutting it anymore.

It’s in the relief with which Phil kisses him after a conversation like that. As if he was seriously worried that Dan would think that was important enough to reconsider their arrangement. It’s that, really. He means more to Phil than what they’re doing here.

Dan fits his hand back around Phil’s neck. Phill immediately relaxes. His mouth goes slack against Dan’s. His eyes close.

“Good,” Dan breathes. He inhales, feeling everything settle into place as his focus shifts to giving Phil what he needs. “That’s very good.”

He rests his forehead against Phil’s for a moment in an effort to truly take it all in. It’s surprisingly easy to do, but not surprising all the same. After all, Phil means more to Dan than all of this, too.

-

Hiding behind the counter isn’t exactly dignified, but it isn’t Dan’s worst at-work offense.

There’s only one other person in the shop. Dan only had to give him a glance though, through the window before he walked in, to know he should fall flat on his ass before Phil even opened the door.

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do here, really. His co-worker is taking a smoke break and unless Phil walks out empty handed, he’ll have to get up and admit to being a freak that hides for no reason.

Seeing Phil in the real world is so strange. It makes everything they do together suddenly real in a way it isn’t when it’s the two of them beneath Dan’s bedsheets.

“Hello? Um, excuse me?”

Phil is looking straight down at him. To be fair, the counter isn’t really sufficient in hiding one giant from another giant but still, Phil’s cheating. He’s bent over slightly to see him. For a few excruciating seconds, they’re staring at each other. Dan’s brain is lagging, or something, because he has no clue what to do or say until they both break out in laughter.

Dan gets up when his stomach stops cramping from the way he’s choking on air, wiping his eyes as he gets to his feet. Phil doesn’t even have a book to buy. He’s just smiling at Dan like he knows him in this world, too.

“Sorry,” Dan says, “can I-uh-help you?”

Phil gives him a quick up-and-down that reminds Dan of the world only the two of them know about. Suddenly his brain is lush with images of Phil’s flushed chest and perfect dick pumping desperately inside Dan’s tight, slick grip. Once their eyes meet again Dan catches himself, blushing and blinking and thinking: _I need you._

“No, I was mostly just checking I hadn’t just walked into a timeline portal that fronts as an unsupervised bookshop,” Phil says, in a tone so normal the notion barely sounds odd.

“Nope,” Dan says. “Just a fucking weirdo sitting on his ass, here.”

Phil brushes a finger over Dan’s knuckles. Dan hadn’t even noticed he’s been holding on to the edge of the counter as though it’s his one tether to reality. He relaxes slightly. When Dan doesn’t flinch, Phil’s palm covers the back of his hand. Dan’s heart is pounding.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” Phil says.

“I hadn’t exactly told you.”

“I’m just saying so you don’t think I’m stalking you.”

Dan laughs. Phil pulls his hand away.

“Don’t know if I believe that, mate,” Dan grins.

“You did hide quickly,” Phil says, with an air of actually thinking about it seriously. His goofy smile betrays that notion entirely. “Almost like you were expecting it.”

“So you enjoy turning things around on people, is that it?” Dan asks.

Without a beat, Phil says: “We both know this about me, don’t we?”

Dan’s sure he’s bright red at this point, scrambling for a key to lock the door between their two worlds again, but he fails. That door is wide open now. Dan’s mouth clicks shut. He nods.

“See you Friday, then?” Phil asks.

“Uh,” Dan stutters. His brain is still lagging, trying to piece together the fact that himself at work is the same person that meets this guy every Friday to fuck. “Yeah?”

They share another look. As Phil leaves, Dan wonders whether this bookshop might truly be a timeline portal, and if this is the moment the two of them were supposed to have met for the first time.

-

Dan is on his stomach. His wrists are cuffed together behind his back. Phil is pushing him down. Those usually nervous, fidgety hands feel so strong right now. Palms flat over Dan’s shoulder blades, Phil levels his weight into him. Dan can feel Phil’s hard, lubed-up dick brushing over his ass and it kills him. He’s practically drooling for it, for this. He’s buzzing, letting himself be manhandled because Phil told him to stay still and be quiet.

Phil has visited the bookshop a few times since he first came in two weeks ago. Dan doesn’t hide behind the counter when he does. Instead, he helps Phil find what he needs. Most of the times, what Phil needs is to get Dan into the tight, secluded space between two bookcases at the back of the shop, hands sliding up the front of his t-shirt as Dan kisses him with an eagerness he didn’t know he had in him.

Phil’s cock settles between Dan’s ass cheeks. The gasping groan to follow goes straight to Dan’s dick, where it’s useless and rutting against the sheets he soaked with his own load only a couple minutes ago. 

“Don’t move,” Phil grits out. Dan can hear how close he is now. He feels it in the stuttering grip around his shoulders. _”Fuck.”_

Dan bites the pillow, focuses on being as soft and pliant as possible. It doesn’t take long before his hands get sticky when Phil stops aggressively fucking him and instead aggressively comes all over him. He must be some kind of picture, cuffed and faceless and unloaded onto.

Phil breathes for a few seconds before there’s a towel wiping Dan’s ass and wrists. Dan is practically floating in subspace. He barely notices once his wrists are free to move. Phil has to beckon him, massage his joints and kiss his shoulder, tell him it’s okay. 

They’re in each other’s arms the moment Phil lies back down next to him. They’re sweaty and kind of gross, but Dan still nuzzles into Phil’s neck.

“Fuck,” Phil sighs, holding Dan so tight. It takes him a while, after he’s truly been Dominant, to let go of that aggression. “You’re so good.”

The thing is, Dan feels safe like this. With Phil’s brand of aggression. Because he still says things like that, he still has praise to give. He’s always aggressively _loving_ , and kind, and very fucking horny.

Dan can’t think about much other than this anymore. At work, at home, out with his coworkers. Some part of his mind is always with Phil. Wondering what he’s up to and whether he’s thinking about him, too. Imagining the last time they were together, so open about everything until they’re not, because it’s over, and Phil has to go home.

The bookshop visits make it less unbearable, or maybe more so. All Dan knows is that he doesn’t want to face reality yet. He doesn’t want Phil to leave.

“Sleep with me,” Dan whispers into Phil’s neck.

He regrets it as soon as it’s out of his mouth. There’s an awkward tremble to his voice that suggests all kinds of emotions that aren’t welcome in this arrangement. Well, they probably aren’t anyway, Dan hasn’t asked.

“Okay,” is all Phil says.

He rolls away. Dan has half the mind not to reach out for him. He’s so fucking pathetic as a sub.

Phil still notices, though. His eyes meet Dan’s immediately, eyebrows twitching for a second that indicates that he tuned in and realised Dan doesn’t want to be left alone. “Let’s clean up, yeah? Eat?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. He sits up. 

They used to laugh it off, before. Now they’ve been doing it for long enough that they allow the mood and feeling of the scene to bleed into the ‘after’, because they’re safe together. They can indulge in this mindset they seek out every week without fail.

Dan falls asleep with Phil’s back against his chest that night, surrounded by fairy lights and watching _My Neighbour Totoro_ on a too-small laptop screen.

-

After the first night Phil stays over, he doesn’t really leave.

He goes to work, of course, as does Dan. But their arrangement dissolves as easily as it arrived. It feels natural to make this into what it’s becoming; Phil coming home with take-out an hour after Dan’s gotten home. There are scented candles on the coffee table, wandering hands, kisses everywhere as the news broadcast goes to commercials. 

London is slowly turning into this. Something soft, and easy, despite the fact that they have sex with harsher roles sometimes. It’s not all they are. They’re fairy lights, and Phil laughing at Dan’s never wavering Pokémon Go addiction, and domestic arguments, and kissing like nothing else in the world exists.

There’s so much more to consider in Dan’s unfortunate London flat nowadays. Mice and sirens and rattling windows aren’t the first things that come to mind anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! | [tumblr post](https://intoapuddle.tumblr.com/post/634241348670767104/arrangements)


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